It’s been 35 years since the Bullets headed down I-95 to play in the Washington area (where they became the Wizards in 1997) and Baltimore hasn’t even had a whiff of getting a pro basketball team since. Sure, the Seattle Sonics were available earlier this year, but Baltimore was never a legitimate contender to get them. (The Sonics’ new home, Oklahoma City, was announced this month).

And the idea of Baltimore supporting a professional hockey team, especially when the area’s handful of hockey fans can go to D.C. or Philadelphia to watch a game, seems even more unrealistic (see comments here).

Even the city’s professional baseball team has been struggling to draw crowds for the past few years as excitement over the new ballpark has faded and the reality of a mediocre ball club has set in. The Orioles are a perfect case in point: when teams do well, more people come to their games. A few weeks before the All-Star break, the team was playing above-.500 ball and Camden Yards was attracting more people than it had in recent years.

Today the team is 10.5 games out of first place in the American League East, sits three games below .500 and is 7-11 in the month of July. In the last four weeks, attendance at Oriole Park has dropped by an average of 2,000 per night.

So while a new franchise might draw sellout crowds the first few years, after the excitement wears off where will Baltimore stand? If the team isn’t any good, evidence so far points to all but the hardcore fans in this city being pretty indifferent about watching a lousy team in person. (The Ravens, of course, are the grand exception to that — despite a 5-11 season last year M&T Bank Stadium was packed for every game.)

And while it should be noted that an 18,500-seat arena might be easier to fill up than a ballpark that seats more than 48,000, do you think Baltimore could really support a professional hockey or basketball team?

LIZ FARMER, Business Writer

The name? “Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii.”

Do you think the judge was rightly sparing the 9-year-old a lifetime of humiliation or sticking his nose where it didn’t belong? What if some U.S. judge (maybe in Hollywood?) started renaming kids? Would it mean so long to celebrity baby names like Tu Morrow, Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette and Pilot Inspektor Lee?

Lawyers: have you ever had a client with such a horrible name that you’d have changed it, if you had the authority to do so?

Hat tip: ABA Journal.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

The stomp-off is a qualifier for the Maryland Regional’s World Championship Grape Stomp, and the winning team will be determined by the amount of juice created from each barrel after five minutes of stomping. The winners will receive two plane tickets to compete at the World Championship Grape Stomp at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Note to would-be contestants: stomping grapes is not as easy as it looks. It’s tiring, dirty and it takes forever to do the job that — thankfully — machines these days accomplish much more efficiently. So before you head out to the fairgrounds, kick off your shoes and jump into the grape basin, I’d recommend checking out a few sites that show what not to do and give you some idea of what to expect.

But despite being out-of-date, this practice has lived on as one of the more recognizable images of the wine industry and grape stomping contests seem to go hand-in-hand (or should I say hand-in-foot?) with wine festivals. And the popularity of the activity seems to signify the growing wine industry in Maryland.

While some older winemakers have long had grape stomping contests as a part of their touristy caches, the activity in Maryland has been catching on in the last few years. And according to recent industry figures, sales are consistently increasing, and last year Maryland wineries sold more than 1 million bottles for the first time.

Do you think that the recent rise in the number of wine festivals and activities is a trend or a sign that Maryland wineries are gaining more of a foothold in the industry?

LIZ FARMER, Business Writer

According to this article in the Salt Lake City Tribune, a motorist was unhappy with another driver’s request.

Apparently, the conversation went as follows:

Driver 1: (rolling down his window) “Excuse me, sir, do you have any Grey Poupon?”

Driver 2: (pulling out his black handgun from the car’s glove compartment and pointing it at the three occupants of Driver 1’s vehicle)
“Here’s your Grey Poupon, roll your [expletive] windows up.”

The police were not amused, and charged Driver 2 with aggravated assault.

Driver 1 remains at large, quoting bad 1985 television ads with impunity.

CHRISTINA DORAN, Assistant Legal Editor

The Baltimore Sun and other major dailies announced such transformations this summer.

Not that covering more of where you live is a bad thing but is raises two questions with me. One, what’s going to happen to the little guys — those weekly or biweekly papers who used to be the sole champions of community coverage? Having interned for such a paper I know firsthand that those publications pride themselves on being the ones that parents scour to see their kid’s sports achievements in print or act as a platform for small town activists to voice their issues.

If the major dailies start horning in on the community coverage, what’s left for the smaller publications to call their own and justify their existence?

Another point of concern is this turning away from covering the global community. Being an American history buff, I of course have to point out the similarities between this notion and the isolationist 1920s when post-war fatigue and an increased focus on the material world were abruptly followed by the Great Depression in 1929 and World War II ten years later.

Now, I’m not trying to say that isolationism caused WWII, but in this day and age the world is much smaller and it helps to know what the guy on the other side of the pond thinks of you. Or at least have an idea of what they’re up to.

International news may not be as widely read as the sports section but it’s still a big part of what’s going on in our world today. Do you think it’s a newspaper’s duty to cover what’s going on in other countries, or to just print what’s popular with readers?

LIZ FARMER, Business Writer  

The deli closing and a possible replacement have been the topic of much discussion around Towson for months. The restaurant was popular among the legal community because of the good food and location next to Baltimore County Circuit Court.

Back in April, I heard a new tenant would be in place at some point during the summer. But despite today’s cleaning, there are no signs indicating new ownership or a scheduled opening date. We’ll keep you posted.

DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer

I may have stumbled on a way to keep it from happening again. David Landsel, in a recent piece on Aviation.com, reveals that we have finally reached that pivotal point in the evolution of human civilization where it is cheaper to send your luggage through the mail than to entrust its safety to the airline bag jockeys.

My favorite part:

“You’re also far less likely to have your bag ‘mishandled’ — that’s the fun word the Department of Transportation uses — by your airline or the Transportation Security Administration. And if a shipper loses your bags, which is unlikely, at least it will apologize.”

In “Ship Heavy Baggage Instead of Checking It”, Landsel offers some tips on how to enter this brave new world of travel-via-FedEx. Check it out and let us know if you’ve ever tried the technique.

JOE BACCHUS, Web Specialist

But seriously — those in support of the measure, voted down by the council 11-3, say they are concerned about the amount of garbage created by plastic bags and this is certainly a legitimate concern. But on the other hand, those against the bill said they did not think that tapping natural resources to make more paper bags would help the environment any more.

As it was so aptly put by City Councilwoman Rochelle “Rikki” Spector, “It takes trees to make paper bags.”

Is it, after all, not the material itself but our use of the material that needs to be put in check? I prefer plastic bags for their sturdiness — especially when holding products that tend to perspire in bags like milk or ice cream — and for their convenient handles. I also save them to reuse as garbage bags.

But I also throw away my share of plastic bags and could do more for the environment like save them for the bag recycling bins I see outside many grocery stores, or bring my own cloth shopping bag to the store to cut down on plastic bag use.

But, quite honestly, that requires a little more effort on everyone’s part and I don’t know that any amount of activism and raising awareness will be able to get every shopper to consistently change their habits.

What do you think? Should we keep pushing the paper because at least it’s a step in the right direction or should we “bag” that approach (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) and start addressing people’s shopping behavior?

LIZ FARMER, Business Writer

(picture taken by Assistant Legal Editor Christina Doran in downtown Baltimore)

Baltimore Housing commissioner Paul Graziano is quoted criticizing the current presidential administration, saying, “They don’t understand the market dynamics here at all…We can let the market adjust and see the last seven or eight years of investment go down the tubes. Or we can intervene now to reclaim this inventory and protect these neighborhoods.” (more…)

Will you be happy with the life you lived?

These aren’t my questions. They’re from John E. Girouard, the president of Capital Asset Management Group in Bethesda. He’s also the author of “The Ten Truths of Wealth Creation.”

Apparently, part of Girouard’s retirement planning and financial services work is getting clients to consider those questions people really don’t like to consider.

“‘I begin working with clients by asking them to write their full name and the age at which they guess they will die. Then I ask them to write down the five things they wish they had been known for, had accomplished, had achieved, or been doing in the year before they died.’

“Girouard says this exercise is often sobering, provoking people into converting secret fears into action so that the financial planning process can be geared toward making sure those five important things happen before they die.”

It’s off-putting, but I see the benefit in the process. How about you? Any mountains to climb or seas to cross before shuffling off?

(My current plan is immortality. It’s working so far.)

JOE BACCHUS, Web Specialist